Nuclear Bunkerave set to host a 12 hour club marathon in a very unique venue

The event will bring Animal Farm, Rebecca Vasmant and more to Scotland's Nuclear Bunker in Fife

The old nuclear bunker out past Anstruther might be a popular family tourist attraction, but club promoters from around Scotland have long had their eye on it for a party, presumably with thoughts of the rave from The Matrix Reloaded in mind while they did so. Fortunately the guys who’ve finally managed to put something together have settled on a much more credible party.

David Purves is one of the men behind NuClear, a new 600 capacity party to be held both inside and outside Scotland’s Nuclear Bunker, to give it the correct title. A Scot, he has experience working in venues and putting on events in Australia, and he relates his experience there to what he’s trying to do here. ‘I would go to bush parties there,’ he says. ‘They’re great, they’re absolutely mobbed and they get lots of good local DJs coming to play, plus it’s never too hard to get to them. People just drive or get buses, and they’ll dance all night.’

So what he’s trying to do, in association with the guys who run the Gig in the Dump parties in the Scottish Borders (Stuart Irvine) and Sonar.FM in Glasgow (Simon Forbes), is create the atmosphere of that time-honoured Scottish analogue of the bush party – the quarry party. Except this one won’t be illegal and it’s going to benefit from a much more scenic venue.

‘We had to negotiate over the number of people who would be allowed inside at once,’ says Purves, ‘so there’s also going to be a heated marquee outside, right next to the entrance, to spread them out a bit. In the Bunker there’ll be a bar area, a chill-out room and a bigger dancefloor area. You walk along a large tunnel and through the blast doors to get to it, and the space we’re using as our main room is actually two rooms. The walls in there can be dismantled and rebuilt, it was in case the Government ever needed to have an emergency meeting in there.’

The event will start at 8pm in the evening and run right through for 12 hours, with buses from Edinburgh and Glasgow for those who don’t want to risk driving after that little sleep. To get the crowd through the night a mass of local DJs have been booked, including Glasgow’s all-day recovery session specialists Sunday Circus, Edinburgh’s Animal Hospital, Ministry of Sound’s Rebecca Vasmant (pictured), Telford from Subculture’s reserve list of DJs and many more. In all, 27 DJs have so far been confirmed.

‘I didn’t want to keep it all to one specific genre,’ says Purves, ‘I wanted to offer as much variety as possible. That’s good, it means people can experience the sound of different nights that they wouldn’t normally go to. Plus it means there’ll be a constant flow of people in and out of the Bunker so it doesn’t get too crowded.’

It’s very much an unknown quantity to do something like this for the first time, but Purves says that ticket sales are going well, with two-thirds gone and half of the rest on reservation. If it’s a success, he says he’d ideally like to do it once a month, and he’s also spoken to the owner of the derelict nuclear bunker in Edinburgh’s Corstorphine, who apparently plans to renovate and open it in the next couple of years. In the meantime, we just hope this one doesn’t bomb (sorry).

NuClear was originally intended to take place at Scotland’s Secret Bunker, near St Andrews, on Sat 2 Feb, but has now been postponed; tickets to the original event will still be valid for the rescheduled date.